The present invention relates to the field of computer assisted localization and navigation and, more particularly, to computer assisted localization and navigation in industrial-type environments.
A related type of system and method is disclosed in copending application Ser. No. 09/741,581, filed Dec. 20, 2000 in the names of Navab and Genc, entitled COMPUTER ASSISTED LOCALIZATION AND NAVIGATION IN INDUSTRIAL ENVIRONMENTS and whereof the disclosure is hereby incorporated herein by reference.
A person walking in a man-made environment equipped with a wearable or portable computer may want or need to get access databases containing information about his/her surroundings. If the user wants to access data which is position dependent, one can use a camera attached to the wearable computer to determine the position of the user which, in turn, can be used as an index to a database to retrieve the desired information.
For example, a maintenance person carrying a hand-held computer with a camera attached to it may be facing a wall within which concealed electrical wiring may need to be located. The computer can automatically detect the position of the user and retrieve and display an augmented image showing where the wires are in that wall.
Augmented reality has received attention from computer vision and computer graphics researchers. See, for example, IWAR""98. International Workshop on Augmented Reality, San Francisco, Calif., USA, October 1998; and IWAR""99. International Workshop on Augmented Reality, San Francisco, Calif., USA, October 1999.
When a real image needs to be augmented with a virtual object, typically one has to register the scene and the object in 3D. This registration generally involves determining the pose of the camera that has captured the picture and the three-dimensional structure of the scene. When the augmentation is done interactively, one needs to track the camera, i.e., to compute for each frame the position and orientation.
Though far from being completely solved, tracking can be done in several ways. They may be classified as vision-based and non-vision-based solutions. Nonvision-based solutions include magnetic, infrared, acoustic trackers, and the like. Most of these methods are not suitable for industrial settings either due to their limited range or their operating conditions. For instance, magnetic trackers cannot operate near ferromagnetic objects.
In accordance with an aspect of the invention, a method for computer assisted site navigation, comprises the steps of: capturing an image of a scene for providing real-time image data; calibrating the camera and localizing the image utilizing the image data and retrieved marker registration and floor-map data for providing position and orientation data; transmitting the data to a web server; utilizing the image data and information on the scene retrieved from a database for deriving an augmented view; and displaying the augmented view. See FIG. 4, for example.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, of the invention, a method for computer assisted site navigation, comprises the steps of: capturing an image of a scene including markers on a video camera for providing real-time image data; processing the image data for providing feature extraction and marker detection data; utilizing the feature extraction and marker detection data and stored information including marker registration and floor-maps for calibrating the camera, localizing the image, and computing coordinates for deriving position and orientation data; displaying the position and orientation data; transmitting the data to a web server; utilizing the image data and information on the scene retrieved from a database for deriving an augmented view; and displaying the augmented view.